FLOWER GARDEN AND PLEASURE GROUND HOUSES, ETC. 371 



every kind of ugly variegation is tried, so that harshness in effect is 

 the usual result, where all should be simple and quiet in colour, as it is 

 in boathouses on the Norfolk Broads made of reeds and rough posts. 

 The simpler the better in all such work, using local material like Oak, 

 which comes in so well for the posts, and reeds for the roof ; but the 

 simplest brickwork and brown tiles would be far better than the con- 

 trast of ugly colours which the modern builder both in France and 

 England delights in. The place, too, should be carefully chosen and 

 the building not conspicuous. It is well to avoid the cost of railway 

 carriage in the making of simple structures like boat-houses, and also 

 carting, which is such a costly matter in many districts. It is best to 

 use materials of the estate or country. Ivy and living creepers may 

 help to protect the sides of airy sheds. Larch comes in well where Oak 

 is not to be spared, and Larch shingling for the roof might be used, 

 as is commonly done in farm-houses in Northern Europe and America. 

 Little shelters for mowing machines, tools and the like can be made 

 with wood covered with Larch bark, as at Coolhurst, and a very 

 pretty effect they have, besides being less troublesome to make 

 than the heather or thatched roofs, especially in districts where 

 the good thatcher is getting rare. The chip roof, also, of the wooded 

 country around London is an excellent one, lasting for half a century 

 or so if well made, but the men who made it so well are now less 

 and less easy to meet with. And on the whole the best roof 

 for any structure that has to last is of tiles of good colour : tiles 

 made and tested in the locality being often the best. 



FOUNTAINS IN GARDENS. In this moist climate of ours 

 water needs to be used with great discretion. Above all things it 

 must flow and not stagnate. Bacon, who said so many things about 

 gardens well, summed up the case with his usual felicity: "For 

 fountains, they are a great beauty and refreshment ; but pools mar 

 all." No doubt we can all of us recall some pool of great beauty, 

 some moat with little broken reflections that made almost all the charm 

 of the garden wherein it lay, but as a general rule Bacon is right. 



As nothing is drearier than a dry fountain except the exasperat- 

 ing trickle of one that refuses to be drowned out by the continuous 

 drip of the eaves, it is better to place your fountain in a part of the 

 garden which you are only likely to visit on a fine day, and if possible 

 it should be set where its tossing spray will catch the sunbeams while 

 you repose in the cool shade ; then the supply of water may be as it 

 should unfailing. Fountains on such an extensive scale as those 

 of Versailles or Chatsworth are only to be excused, when, as at Caserta, 

 they run day and night from one year's end to the other. It is only 

 in such great places too that large and monumental fountains, basin 

 above basin, adorned with sculpture and connected by cascades, have 



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